Website Aims to Help Organizations Better Communicate Their Impact

May 31, 2011

Your organization is committed to maximizing your impact and to telling your story in an accessible, concise way. You'd like a faster method for finding potential donors and collaborators. People want to help you make a difference - through donations, volunteering, and more - but often struggle to understand what your organization wants to achieve and has already accomplished in a succinct, consistent format.

Charting Impact responds to these needs. At the heart of this new initiative are five simple yet powerful questions that help organizations individually, and the sector collectively, better serve people across the country and around the world. A joint effort of BBB Wise Giving Alliance, GuideStar USA and Independent Sector, this framework was developed, tested and refined by nearly 200 nonprofit and philanthropic leaders.

The Five Questions of Charting Impact

What is your organization aiming to accomplish?

What are your strategies for making this happen?

What are your organization's capabilities for doing this?

How will your organization know if you are making progress?

What have and haven't you accomplished so far?

For your organization individually, Charting Impact sharpens your strategic thinking about how you will achieve your goals. Responding to the five questions creates a unique report that shares concise, detailed information about your plans and progress with key stakeholders, including the public.

For the sector collectively, Charting Impact provides a vehicle that organizations of all types, sizes, and missions can use. As this collaboratively developed, thoroughly tested framework becomes widely shared, it will be easier for organizations to collaborate and for potential supporters to direct their time and funds to those groups that are making a difference.

"Donors don't support a cause because of its efficiency; they support a cause for the impact that it secures for society - for all of us," said Andrew Watt, FInstF, president and CEO of AFP. "Charting Impact will help to focus nonprofits - and their boards - on how to communicate who they are, what they achieve and how they achieve it, skills that all of us need to develop.